Unplugged (Naked Faith)

These are my thoughts about my seven-day media fast.

I gave up: television, movies, music, websites, email, newspapers, magazines, text messages and, eventually, the idea that life without these things would be no life at all. In the silence of the morning, in the stillness of the afternoon, in the quiet of the night, I found something strange. Life wasn't in those things. They were empty.

Life was somewhere else, somewhere old and somewhere very young. It has been there from the beginning. Life just was, even as it is, and as it forever shall be. All my days ran in this strange continuity of the rising and the setting of the sun. Time seemed to stop.

I think I wasn't necessarily close to God as much I was close to heaven. There was no pressure evolve to the newer, better version of myself; there was only me being me. I boiled oatmeal in the morning and ate in silence, sitting stoop-shouldered on the couch and staring into space. In the afternoon I scanned the sky for traces of a storm; I wondered if the clouds would go away. I hiked long zig-zags in the forest and made snowballs, which I ate because I was thirsty from walking in zig-zags. Sometimes, I went to work and did other things. When I couldn't think of anything else to do, I just laid in bed. I prayed a lot. I read my Bible some, too.

It's easy to put all our money on the disciplines, because they look the best and make us feel the best after we do them. I suppose we need them. Without the regular practice of prayer and Scripture study, how could we tame this mortal animal? How could we? But what happens when we stop using the disciplines as a steering wheel, as a way to preserve autonomy? What happens when we let go?

I'm not crazy, not yet at least. You may think I lost my train of thought and started talking about the Big Two (what you do to get close to God, even though that's impossible, because you can't move an inch within space and time unless he wants you to), when this started as a story about a media fast.

This is a story about anything that comes between us and the quiet pleasure of being with our Creator, our Lord and, when the time is right, our Best Friend and the Lover of our souls. They keep telling you, "Do this. Do that," but what happens when you stop trying and say, "Forget this! I want my God, right now, and I don't need anything but a hope and a prayer." Is that even a Christian expression?

It is naked faith.

It is scary.

It is good.

It is righteousness. Luther might be right. We can stop trying and start believing. Sometime along the way we lost our way and started to try again.

There's no need for that. Let us fall into the arms of love, and not be so afraid. Let our insides match our outside, and let us stop lying to ourselves. Lies are so ugly; God is so beautiful. The truth: he's okay with us, and the only reason we'll evolve is to be more like our Lover.

What if there isn't anything to do in heaven? Would our Lover still want us around?